Current Projects                                (Third-Party Funded)

In the research project "STRALI" (Strategic Charging Infrastructure Planning for the Electrification of Urban Transport), cities and municipalities are to be enabled to plan charging infrastructures in line with demand and in accordance with municipal transport policy goals on the basis of multi-criteria data collection and analysis. By means of suitable web-based applications, charging infrastructure planning is to be made usable in the future for the targeted resource-efficient management of traffic flows. The web-based charging infrastructure planning tool serves the targeted control of traffic according to predefined criteria oriented to the interests of mobility users. The combination of empirical data with secondary and technology-supported data from tracking apps and data loggers should enable a better data basis for a subsequent road-accurate traffic model. The data from the simulation and traffic models will finally flow into a newly developed planning tool, which will be used to validate the extent to which mobility behaviour can be influenced by strategic, muticriteria-based charging infrastructure planning. With the interdisciplinary team of engineers, psychologists (both Chair of Mechatronics), business economists (Chair of Business Administration & International Automotive Management), innovation researchers (Chair of Business Administration & Mobility) and transport researchers (Institute of Mobility and Urban Planning) in cooperation with two Essen SMEs, the project will start on 01.08.2023 with funding from the Federal Ministry of Digital Affairs and Transport and will run for three years.

see the project homepage for further information

The use of motorized private transport (MIV) is steadily increasing. This increases traffic congestion, creating traffic jams and requiring further infrastructure development. At the same time, noise and exhaust emissions are increasing, so that the quality of life is declining. To counteract this and achieve the climate targets of the German government, it is necessary to strengthen public transport so that private transport can be reduced or, as a first step, does not increase further. However, this expansion requires high investment costs in infrastructure (e.g. subway line in Düsseldorf Wehrhahn) as well as high operating costs. Therefore, the question arises, how and where can the public transport offer be expanded according to demand in such a way that the additional costs can be covered by customer growth and economic gains?  

To the best of our knowledge, no study has been conducted to date that has simulated and determined the optimal public transit service in areas of lower demand based on surveys of mobility behavior and the determination of multimodal travel resistances. Furthermore, there is currently no tool available that public transport operators can use to perform optimal planning in the municipality.  
Only in recent years it has become possible to answer this question in acceptable processing and computing time due to open databases and increased computing capacities.  
The planned study follows the following approach to achieve the objectives:

1. Develop a new methodology for determining municipal and regional mobility user needs in terms of multimodal source-destination time relations (mmQZZ).
2. Application of the methodology while collecting and processing mobility data from sources that already exist in municipalities or can be collected in a low-threshold manner using the developed tools.
3. Use of the data to create a realistic, multimodal and networked traffic simulation as a basis for the subsequent study.   
4. Study of the potentials a) of a stronger networking of different existing means of transport using the existing infrastructure (e.g. "waiting for connection" in the case of short delays), b) of the inclusion of new forms of operation in public transport (e.g. automated minibuses) as well as c) by optimizing a hybrid on-demand transport especially for structurally weak or poorly connected (in the sense of public transport) regions.

see the project homepage for further information

Guidelines for the functional use of digital media by children and adolescents are increasingly demanded by parents, teachers, and politicians. However, in order to make scientifically sound recommendations for guidelines, there is a need for a better understanding of the psychological mechanisms that contribute to the functional use of digital media. The aim is to make full use of the opportunities and possibilities offered by digital media and not to protect against the risks of dysfunctional and addictive use of digital offerings exclusively through preventive offerings. This is where the proposed "RuhrNetwork for Functional Digital Media-Use in Children and Adolescents" comes in, which is intended to provide a structural framework for interdisciplinary and cross-location research into psychological mechanisms of functional digital media use and the development of empirically tested measures to promote this. By applying for third-party funding and collaborating with national and international researchers, including FOR 2974, the RuhrNetwork aims to contribute to long-term research on functional digital media use and to a holistic understanding of children's and adolescents' media use.

see the project homepage for further information

Together with the Institute of Automatic  Control at the RWTH Aachen, the Institute for Ship Technology, Ocean Engineering and Transport Systems at the University Duisburg-Essen,  the Intitute of Dynamics and Control at the University Duisburg-Essen, and the Development Centre for Ship Technology and Transport Systems, we aim to develop basic principles for the risk assessment of systems for automated navigation on inland vessels with regard to their interaction with the overall system.

The project is funded by the BMDV